Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing whether or not the DTV, the so-called Destination Thailand Visa is truly valid for 5 years. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand's Medical Insurance rules for foreigners are a muddle. Quoting directly: "There is now a visa valid for 5 years known as Destination Visa Thailand," - I think they meant Destination Thailand Visa - "which is technically a Tourist permit but probably does not qualify for free accident cover as it offers an initial stay of 180 days." Well okay let's be real clear. Going back to: "there is now a Visa valid for 5 years" - maybe. As we have discussed in other videos, Ministry of Foreign Affairs came up with this whole plan. Ministry of Interior has been totally silent on the Destination Thailand Visa to date. Ministry of Foreign Affairs has set a number of things that turned out to be completely erroneous. One of them was it could be extended in-country; that has gone away. The second one was it had some sort of inherent work authorization; that is not true, although they have noted that they have lightened up on the issue of you are working remotely; you have to get on a phone or get on emails and deal with somebody abroad. That has been mitigated a little bit just across the board which is actually kind of a good thing because I didn't ever like talking to people about like the Retirement Visa when they say "hey, every once in a while I have to send emails or I work remotely with the company I am a consultant for that I retired from, etc., etc." and I say "well technically you need a Work Permit to do that in Thailand". Lightening up on that I actually tended to agree with, I think it is good for everybody. But again, that doesn't mean you are work authorized in Thailand. It was talked about as if you were - not really.

The point I'm trying to make here, these Destination Thailand Visas look a lot like what we used to call the 1-year Non-Immigrant Visas. I used to get a lot of people these especially the B category. You could get them generally speaking through the Honorary Consulates abroad; they were one year validity but you only got 90 days of status at each entry. So you have the Visa sticker in your passport; it had the 1-year validity and then you got 90 days in each entry. As I said in other videos, back then that wasn't a big deal because Immigration would look at that and they would say "you are only being admitted for 90 days and the total time frame is a year on the sticker." Now MFA has just unilaterally decided to create this Destination Thailand Visa which has a 5-year validity with 180 days at each entry. But again, Immigration is ultimately going to be the one to decide if people can re-enter. I'm here to tell you, Immigration Policy for the past decade has been one of "hey, if you're not getting a Work Permit and paying taxes in Thailand, we don't want you living here." That's been clear. They did a crackdown on people that were living here using Tourist Visas about 8 /10 years ago. In fact, it was right before, it was going in to 2014 so it was actually under the old Yingluck Government that I remember this starting. So, for those who say "oh it was just the Military Government! No, a lot of things in Immigration started under Yingluck that were then carried on in the later Administration. 

That being said, and the point I am trying to make in this video is look it's Immigration's mandate that folks who are true tourists not be living in Thailand. That operates in contravention with this notion of the DTV. Then meanwhile when we are talking about the Interior Minister, hasn't said a word about how these DTVs are going to be treated. Meanwhile the Ministry of Foreign Affairs talks about all kinds of things that they really have no authority over. I fail to see where it is prudent to presume that these are going to operate exactly the way people think they are. The author of this Pattaya Mail article, Mr. Kenyon - I was actually talking to him in person some weeks back - and we were talking about the fact we seem to be the only two people on the same frequency regarding how the DTV is going to play out because a lot of people seem to have a problem with our opinion that "hey this is not a foregone conclusion you are just going to get this 5 years and everything is going to be hunky dory." It looks to me like this was a political expedient creating this Visa, got a bunch of people to come into Thailand which is probably going to jack up the numbers in terms of tourists coming in for the high season which politically that benefits anybody who can take credit for that. But again, I'm not convinced that they really care about the back end of this thing and when Immigration, specifically under the auspices of Interior in the form of the border security checkpoints people as well as people here in the country that enforce Immigration policy, I'm not convinced that they are just going to roll along with this whole policy without having their own say in how this is actually going to operate and their own say may result in this being a far more cumbersome visa than has been originally advertised.